Title

Author

Degree Name

EdD (Doctor of Education)

Program

Educational Leadership

Date of Award

12-2005

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Terrence A. Tollefson

Committee Members

Andrew Czuchry, Jasmine R. Renner, Louise L. MacKay

Abstract

The purpose of this research study was to analyze the leadership styles of owners of small land surveying businesses in the states of Tennessee and Virginia to determine what leadership style was currently being employed by the majority of those owners. The participants in this study were chosen from members of the Virginia Association of Surveyors and the Tennessee Association of Professional Surveyors. The respondents to the questionnaire were licensed land surveyors who owned small firms of fewer than 101 employees. In addition, a corollary purpose was to flesh out the skeletal literature available on small business leadership styles and their effect on small business success.

The owners of the small surveying businesses were asked to reply to a series of questions on demographic data and Likert-type scale questions designed to examine the respondents' leadership styles as Participatory, Situational, or Autocratic in a both external and internal environments. The results of the questionnaire produced nominal data, which were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software to compute the frequency and significance. Additionally, a nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis K Independent Samples procedure and one-way Chi -Square tests were used to analyze the statistical relationships and differences in the respondents' answers.

The results of this study suggested that the majority of the respondents used a participatory style of leadership when confronted with internal environment decisions and an autocratic leadership style in the external environment. The overall conclusion drawn from this study was that the owners of small land surveying firms who responded to the questionnaire were predominantly situational because they adjusted their leadership styles to meet the needs and demands of their changing situations.